Former Turf Club manager and Mammy Nuns bassist Leah Rule passes away

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Former Turf Club manager, St. Paul Music Club co-founder, and Mammy Nuns bass player Leah Rule passed away this morning after a two-year battle with cancer. She was 44.

Leah’s husband Rob Rule broke the news on her Facebook page and Caring Bridge site today. “Early on this morning of the winter solstice, Leah left us. She is finally done suffering. I LOVE LEAH.”

Leah and Rob were instrumental in creating the vibrant, community-oriented atmosphere at the Turf Club and helped unite the Twin Cities rock scene in the ’90s and early 2000s with their St. Paul Music Club gatherings. The couple had their first date in the Turf Club’s Clown Lounge and were married in 2000.

Since leaving the Turf Club in 2005, they relocated to Greenvale, Wisc. and spent time fostering their band, the Mammy Nuns, in which Leah played bass. She also actively wrote and illustrated a handmade zine called Rural Fox, which captured her love for music, her friends, and her “critters” and provided insight into her life as a rock ‘n’ roller living on the farmland.

The full reach of their impact on the local community was on display earlier this year as friends and fellow musicians rallied around Leah and Rob Rule with a Rock for the Rules compilation and benefit show. A follow-up compilation, Rock for the Rules Vol. 2, is in the works now and is expected to come out early next year.

“It’s just people and music,” Rob Rule told me at the time, explaining the connection he and Leah felt to the music community. “The two ingredients that are most special to us are people and music. Put them together and magic can happen. It’s really simple.”